Friend Of Marriners Falls

This group will petition further to express that our community want to have access to this very special local nature walk and that we believe that it is an attraction as comparatively safe as hundreds of others in the state. This group will be resourced by the Apollo Bay Chamber of a Commerce and Tourism and aim to lobby DEPI & the Minister for environment & climate change for a solution to enable the reopening of the beautiful walk. Potentially the group may also find ways to assist Parks Victoria in reopening the walk and maintaining it in the future through sourcing funding and physical assistance from volunteers.

Currently we are waiting on contact from DEPI regarding the promised survey on the MNarriners Falls walk. At last weeks meeting Cr. Frank Buchanan explained to the attendees that DEPIs regional manager would be in contact with both Colac Otway Shire and the Apollo Bay Chamber of Commerce & Tourism to initiate the survey. Ideally we would like the survey to form a basis for a report to state that with some works and potential re-routing the walk is safe for public use – contrary to the previous report that occurred at the time the falls were first closed to the public.

If you want to officially become a “Friend of Marriners Falls” please reply to this email with the information filled in below. At this stage your commitment to this group will not be time-consuming.

We will be establishing a Facebook group in the near future and are looking for people to provide their own personal “Stories of Marriners Falls”. If you or someone you know would like to offer a story or account of their own experiences of Marriners Falls we would love to develop a catalogue of these. Please email stories through or post to PO Box 273 Apollo Bay VIC 3233.

We are also looking to collect photographs of Marriners Falls and the walk to use for promoting our group. If you have any we would love to have copies of these. You can either send digital images to this email address or contact Jo Birley on 0419162683 to arrange to have your older photographs scanned.

If you are interested in playing a larger role in the friends group we would like to hear from you. If you have experience in marketing through social media, design & publication, have media contacts or consider yourself a spokesperson please contact us to be more heavily involved.

Comments

Delighted to hear about your efforts and would love to join the ‘friends’. at this stage we are usually only in ABay at weekends having bought a house here after 20 years of family summed holidays – however, we hope to be gradually spending more time here and would love to get more involved in community activities once we do.

Mariners falls has been a family favourite for very many years from when the kids were small and needing helping over the river crossings – recently our eldest son chose the falls to propose to his girlfriend on a wintery day in June (despite the track being officially closed they are regular visitors and always challenge friends to a quick dip in the waterfall come rain or shine!)

I look forward to many more years of visiting which will hopefully be possible with the help of this group.

Absolutely love Mariners falls it is one of the most beautiful places along the Great Ocean Road. It’s a shame parks Victoria hasn’t acted quickly to reopen such a beautiful location.
We haven’t visited the falls since the offical closure but after reading the above comment we may in the near future

I’ve known Marriners has been closed for some time but only just found out it was a permanent closure (I thought it was being assessed for track upgrades). It’s my favorite of the waterfall walks in this area. The entire walk is just beautiful and I’m really sad that it will no longer be accessible. If you walk in the bush, there is always going to be some risk. Unless you want to put up enclosed canopies and concrete tracks everywhere it’s a given. I’ve seen more trees down along tracks in other areas and yet they’ve remained open. Post disclaimers and let people make up their own minds.